The words of caution below, attributed to the composer, Johannes Brahms, are the kind of warning that can lift one’s spirits.

The world is so full of tunes
you have to watch where you walk
else you might step on them.

Can’t you see Brahms, arms clasped behind his back in what contemporaries described as a consistent gesture, walking in the hills outside his home town of Hamburg, Germany, or climbing mountains in Switzerland on vacation with his father? How many tunes there are to hear! The melody of the Alpine shepherd’s horn (said to become the horn call soaring over strings, like sun breaking through clouds, that transfigures the introduction of Brahms’ First Symphony finale)…the rustling of wind among tall grasses…the rhythmic crack of footsteps on hard-packed earth… (more…)

When I was writing the book Tough Transitions, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Gregory Berns, who holds the Distinguished Chair of Neuroeconomics and Director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University Medical School in Atlanta.

What Lights Up the Brain?

In our conversation, Dr. Berns talked about his research on the brain. He said he was working to discover what kinds of activities light up the brain in a positive way so that a person experiences a sense of happiness or contentment or satisfaction.

Dr. Berns told me that one thing had already become clear to him in his research: the brain really likes novelty. In experiments, Dr. Berns discovered that when an individual thinks or does something new, the brain lights up in a way that results in a positive experience for that individual. (more…)

A recent front-page article in The New York Times was entitled, “In Battle, Hunches Prove to be Valuable Assets.” The article—continuing from the front page of the newspaper to take up the full page on A6—describes the research done with soldiers on subjects like “how the brain processes images, how well it reads emotions and how it manages surges in stress hormones.” Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, is quoted in the article:

Not long ago people thought of emotions as old stuff, or just feelings—feelings that had little to do with rational decision making, or that got in the way of it. Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually; in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, all of us.”

The either/or thinking—logical, rational, conscious thinking versus hunches, feelings, “gut responses”—once again proves to be too simplistic. (more…)